Diablo 3 News: October 13, 2008 Wizard gameplay and intro trailer released: (source) Blizzard has released several new gameplay movies and screenshots from Diablo III, showcasing the third installment in the popular Diablo franchise, in development for Windows and Macintosh. Diablo III will pick up the story twenty years after the events of Diablo II. Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal have been defeated, but the Worldstone, which once shielded the inhabitants of the world of Sanctuary from the forces of both Heaven and Hell, has been destroyed, and evil once again stirs in Tristram. Playing as a hero from one of five distinct character classes, players will acquire powerful items, spells, and abilities as they explore new and familiar areas of Sanctuary and battle hordes of demons to safeguard the world from the horrors that have arisen. October 12, 2008 Blizzcon 08 Diablo Class Panel: (source) One of the featured panels during this year's Blizzcon '08 in Anaheim, California is the Diablo 3 class panel. Lots of spiffy information has come out of that as well as the revelation of the newly announced Wizard class. The D3 Class Panel was hosted by game director Jay Wilson, technical game designer Wyatt Cheng and lead technical designer Julian Love. Each panel member had his chance to wow (NO pun intended for all you WoW fans) the audience and boy did they deliver. The Wizard The first thing right off the bat was the revelation of the Wizard as the next class for D3. She comes hot on the heels of the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor but she can deliver an elemental punch beyond all expectations. "We have our finger on the pulse of the Diablo community and we know one thing above all others: They want things to blow up." Cheng and the design team chose to combine the old familiar caster class with something new. In this case, the Wizard uses 'high magic' and can manipulate the universe and channel its power. Blizzard wants players choosing wizards to feel rebellious, brilliant, volatile, brash and self-confident. This clearly comes through in the movie where she literally smirks at Leoric after he tells her she's going to die. We were treated to a look at four of the Wizard's spells including Magic Missle, Electrocute, Slow Time and Disintegrate. October 12, 2008 Blizzard Unveils Wizard Character Class at Blizzcon 2008: (source) The third playable class in Blizzard's Diablo 3 was announced today as the Wizard. Officially revealed by Blizzard President Mike Morhaime as he opened BlizzCon 2008, the Wizard joins the two previously announced character classes, the Witch Doctor and the Barbarian. All three of these classes will be playable at BlizzCon over the weekend. With the Wizard, Blizzard hopes to innovate on the typical caster class. One of these innovations can be seen in the Wizard ability, Slow Time. Slow Time creates a bubble around the Wizard which slows down anything inside it, including magic attacks, arrows, and monsters. The Wizard will still have the basic abilities expected of a ranged-caster class. One of these abilities is the traditional Magic Missile, a quick projectile attack which can be rapidly fired at enemies. Another ability, Electrocute, allows the Wizard to fire a lightning bolt at an enemy which will also chain-damage other nearby targets. The Wizard will be able to use the Teleport ability to move quickly and safely across the game area. Another new ability, Disintegrate, will allow the Wizard to emit a strong, continuous, death-beam across the screen which will fry any enemy it hits, though it will drain mana very quickly. Other abilities include Spectral Blade, a close-range attack, Storm Armor and Stone Skin, defensive abilities, Arcane Orb, a slow projectile attack which explodes on contact, and Meteor Storm and Acid Cloud, two area-of-effect abilities. October 11, 2008 Diablo 3 Developers Discuss Skill Tree Development: (source) A popular saying around Blizzard is "different but worse isn't better, better is better." So when the team set out to create the skill development system in Diablo 3, they knew that they had to create a system that was a true improvement upon their previous games, and not just different for the sake of being different. Despite crafting several critically acclaimed games, the team at Blizzard had its fair share of errors in the trial and error process. While the original Diablo system allowed for an incredible array of character customization due to the fact that spells were learned by randomly dropped items, it also made classes hard to distinguish created balance problems, since any spell could be learned no matter what class you were creating. Diablo II changed this by using skill trees that forced players to specialize, but there were still too many skills, and players often ended up just using all their points to specialize in a few key skills. Most importantly, neither game allowed the player to respec -- to redo their characters skills if they later learned they had mistakenly allotted their skill points. With Diablo III, the team at Blizzard is determined to properly evolve skill trees. If you're worried about diversity, don't be, as classes will now be differentiated thanks to a Rune system. Runes will allow players to modify spells, making a spell do additional damage or perhaps have any number of side effects. To discover the effects of specific runes on spells, players will have to experiment. Thankfully, experimentation is encouraged and easy, as Runes can be swiftly added and removed to spells at the player's whim. The most important feature that I saw was easily a respec system. The team doesn't have it completely figured out, but they have guaranteed that players will have the ability to redo their character's skill points, eliminating all the pain and frustration that Diablo II caused when a player put points into the wrong skills. . |
       
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